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T Minus 18 Months
From the backyard, Momma Kandy’s house smelled amazing. Fresh garlic and ginger greeted me before I entered the house. A basil plant in Momma Kandy’s herb garden had grown visibly in the three weeks I had been staying with her. Tonight, I saw that it had been trimmed back and was undoubtedly being used in whatever gourmet dish awaited me inside.
Momma Kandy reclined on the couch in her usual spot, feet up, TV on, playing Candy Crush on her iPad. Her full thighs spilled over the couch, rolling out from under her hot pink jersey shorts.
“Hey Momma Kandy, I’m home.” I walked into the living room and bent over to give her a kiss. Even though I told her not to get up, she struggled against her weight to greet me with a big smile and even bigger hug. Her enormous chest enveloped me, unfettered by any sort of bra to contain her endowment. I lingered for a bit, with closed eyes and forehead on her shoulder. She was so warm. She was so soft. She smelled so good. She held me so tight. I could feel the muscles of my jaw starting to tighten, so I quickly raised my walls, not wanting to feel anything, because feeling something might lead to feeling everything. I came up for air.
“How was your day?” I asked.
Momma Kandy had knee problems. Everything was a tremendous effort for her. In her day, she was one of the first girls to surf in Mission Beach. She made some good decisions with her money during her 40+ year career as a nurse. Having never married or had kids, she now owned a house with extra bedrooms, just a block from the water. Her mother and sister had passed away years ago, and she was pseudo-family with my in-laws; not technically related, but had been best friends with my aunt-in-law since childhood. At a family birthday party a few months earlier, she pulled me aside to say that if I ever needed a place to stay, I could have her back room for as long as I needed.
I all but wrote her off at the time. My ego silently asserted that I would never need to take a hand out, especially not from an old fat lady whose most exciting part of the day was the NYT’s crossword puzzle. Things were “fine” with Kurt. Sure, he would disappear every other weekend on another bender and sure, he would come back with rage in his eyes and poison for words, but he promised me he was going to kick it this time, and the time before, and the time before that. We would work it out.
I had Kandy’s number from some family group texts. Six weeks after Kandy made her offer at the birthday party, I was finally ready to admit the severity of the situation at home. I found myself typing out words I thought I would never type. I can’t stay here anymore, I’m starting to get a little scared. I don’t really have anywhere else to go. Were you really serious about your offer? I don’t have any money and I won’t be able to pay for rent right away.
In less than a minute, my phone beeped with the response. I’ll have the room ready for you tomorrow. I won’t accept any money.
After the night’s drama in the ally, I packed up to leave. I arrived at Kandy’s house with a back seat full of everything I owned. She showed me around the house, then gave me space to decompress. Within a day, I settled into a routine. I packed breakfast and lunch and left the house early in the morning. I stayed all day at the yoga studio. When I had caught up with everything that needed to be done, I would find more creative marketing projects to work on. I had a fire under my skin. I had to make money to survive now. It was either close up shop and get a waitressing job, or find some way to get more clients. Fear of failure and codependence forbade me to close up shop. My students needed me, I thought. Actually, I needed them. My community would laugh at me if I admitted defeat, I thought. I needed the yoga studio to be successful in order to survive. Fear fueled me ten to twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I worked and I worked and I worked. By the end of that month, the numbers were up and I was completely exhausted.
A couple of weeks into my stay at Momma Kandy’s, Momma shuffled into the kitchen and told me about her big day as she re-heated dinner for me. She had gone to her women’s circuit training gym, and then to the market to buy fresh ingredients for the dinner she prepared for me. She handed me a plate of six extra jumbo shrimp, a pile of perfectly seasoned stir fried veggies and a scoop of brown rice. I sat at the table, famished from a twelve hour work day, while Kandy pulled out the gin.
“Is it Friday already?” I asked. Kandy only drank on weekends. Days meant nothing to me, since I was working seventy-plus hour weeks. There was no such thing as a day off. She took two martini glasses out of the freezer and stuck two toothpicks with four jumbo olives each. She danced while she shook the vermouth, olive juice and gin.
I watched her body sway with pleasure, stuffing my face with shrimp and bell peppers, smothered in butter and love. She shook the martinis not so much with her hands and arms, but with her entire body–by her entire being. I started to giggle at her voluptuous body’s shakings and gyrations. As she shook, she sang a made-up song.
“Its Friiiiii-day, its Fr-Fr-Friday!” My giggles erupted into an all-out belly laugh. I dropped my fork and shook my head, laughing hysterically. Suddenly, the long work hours I had been hiding behind were stripped away. Floodgates opened, and tears erupted alongside my laughter. I dropped my head into my hands. Slumped over the table, I wept. Momma Kandy stopped singing. She stopped dancing. She placed the shaker on the counter and circled behind my chair. With one hand on either shoulder, Momma Kandy kissed the back of my head and said, “I know, sweetie, I know.”
Living with Mommy Kandy was wonderful, but I felt guilty about not paying rent, and we both knew the agreement was temporary. And I was no longer within walking distance to my yoga studio. The class schedule required me to be at the studio for morning classes, noon classes and evening classes. Rather than driving back and forth I just stayed all day. Students constantly came in and wanted to chat. In the beginning, I loved playing therapist, hearing about their boyfriend issues or stressful work situation. But eventually, I couldn’t rush them out fast enough. Didn’t they know I had work to do? My resentment toward them grew. Here they were, wanting all my time, paying pennies for their classes! My resentment showed up in the way I adjusted students in class, yanking them, forcing them to do it better. It would show up in the way I talked to the other teachers. Didn’t they know they were supposed to be marketing themselves?
I wasn’t in a good place, and I knew it. I knew I needed to take better care of myself. I knew that, if I didn’t do some nice things for myself, spend a little more time away from work, I would end up killing the business.
The decision to leave Momma Kandy’s and rent my own place was based completely on faith. I knew I couldn’t afford it. But I was learning in therapy to acknowledge and act on my needs. I learned that the only way I could be of value to this world was to first take care of myself. I needed to live near my yoga studio so I could go home during the afternoon. Even more than that, for my dignity, I needed to have my own place to live.
In a therapy session, I described my terror at watching my savings dwindle, little by little. I told the therapist that I probably had enough to survive for six months on my own. After that, I would not be able to pay rent or buy food. The therapist regarded me for a moment, then asked me the simplest question.
“What happens if you can’t pay your rent?”
“I could borrow money from my parents, but eventually I’d have to figure something else out.”
“And what happens at that point?” he continued.
“I’d have to close the studio, I’d feel like a miserable failure.”
“Ok, so then what comes next?” He wouldn’t stop asking the same stupid question.
“Well, I’m not going back to corporate America, and I’m not moving to the ghetto with a bunch of roommates to wait tables. I can’t do that to myself.”
“So then what?” He was making me think about it like a chess game.
“I guess I’d probably get rid of all my stuff and join the Peace Corps. I’ve always thought that would be cool.”
“That would be AWESOME!” A big smile lit up his face. The smile spread to my face as well. “Melanie, The universe is like a river and you are floating in the river. The flow of the universe is toward truth and light and joy. All you have to do is stop clinging to rocks. Release your resistance, and just let yourself be carried away. You might get bounced around a bit, but you are always going in the right direction.”
I loved his analogy, and I bought into every word of it. It was completely different from the it’s-all -gonna-burn, sinful-nature worldview I was raised on. It resonated in my soul. He quoted what I would later learn was Louise Hay:
“You’ve never made a wrong decision in your life. In fact, you can’t make a wrong decision. You’ve always done the right thing in the moment you did it, based upon the amount of enlightenment you carried at that time. You have always done your best, and your best is always good enough. By moving toward what makes you happy, you learn exactly what needs to be learned in that moment.”
It was like a math puzzle had just been solved. I wasn’t born a sinner. I’ve actually never sinned. I’ve only, always, done the best I could at the time I did it. It was 100% against what I had been taught, and I believed it.
I understood something important in that session. Taking care of my own needs and wants would only lead me to the happiest of places. It would never lead toward doom and destruction. Doing what was in my best interests, there was no way that I could fail. All I had to do was to care bravely for myself, no matter how scary it got. I must walk through the darkness, because hope and light and happiness would always find me on the other side, in even greater measure than I currently possessed them.
I found an apartment across the street from my yoga studio. I wrote a cover letter with my application and prayed the landlady wouldn’t request tax documents. The next day, I was approved. Three days later, I moved into a space where I could reclaim my dignity. I had no clue how I would afford it, but for the first time in my life I was completely willing to fail.
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*some names have been changed to protect privacy
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